hi just when you think a thing is just so,boom!in pops the trickster,thought i was beginning to understand this dream stuff,its not like me to have a nightmare,thought i had dealt with most of my repressions,then the bear came!i am confronted with this huge 15ft high growling ,snarling, dark bear.trashing all doors as it makes its way towards me,i am walking backwards at this stage,i have no defence against it,back to the wall,and a gun is passed to me,i am also past one bullet only,i know that i have to make it count,as much as i love bears in real life,i shot it in the head,most disturbing.
afterwards i ate it.
i know its a lot healthier to welcome these sort of powers and assimilate them into your consciousness,
this creature was very negative and had to be stopped,
i am aware of the native american and other tribal beliefs of the bear being a creature of great medicine,and power and that the eating of one could well be a metaphor for the assimilation of this energy .
i saw this dream as a reflection,of my own battle with the negative/shaddow side of my self,very powerful and distructive,the one bullet which was most prominent in the action of this dream,was the realisation that i have this opportunity,this life even,to be free of this duality,i would be interested in any thoughts.

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Steve,
Very interesting. My first impression is you are confronted with perhaps a final 'test' in the current phase of your journey {the journey only ends with the final transition}. I also sense it is from the feminine self. Giving her ultimate power is something one must do.

What is even more striking is killing the bear and consuming it. This was the ritual of the cave bear of primal man, the earliest known ritual with the bone through the eye of the bear skull {head}. The archetypes. Perhaps for you it is the ritual of the primative psyche.

I am happy to see you are taking it in stride, recognizing it as part of your 'assimilation of knowledge'. Just when you think you have it figured out, bam! As Campbell said, life is a series of tests and revelations. This dream is about the test. Look forward to the revelations that are to come.
Gerard

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thanks jerry,i did feel most strongly that there was an element of supreme ordeal about this dream,i have consciously put my trust in the powers that are really running the show,although i hold a small percentage of doubt,which is me all over.my dreams etc have given me a glimpse of what is possible and this, because of its unconscious origins conflicts with what the conscious world dictates,i can only refer to a movie as an analogy for this part of the journey as i see it.
in the last part of field of dreams,which is ,i am sure you know is a perfect example of the hero journey,
ray kinsella,the hero has to make a choice between all that has been revealed to him from an unconscious/spiritual dimension and what the physical world is demanding from him,on pain of losing everything,family,home,sanity,of course he chooses the latter and all is revealed,its all about trust!
its taken me years to accept that dreams have a legitimate place in our spiritual development.even after studying native american beliefs,jung ,campbell,myths, all this stuff,its not until you actually experience or become aware that, what all these great peoples and cultures are talking about is real,that you wake up.
i have to say that looking back on earlier dreams,10 years ago, about the time i feel i woke up,i have seen the call to adventure,the refusal of the adventure,the threshold battle and considering that at that point i had not even heard of joseph campbell or his works,it definatley reinforces the validity of of the journey that i am on and everyone else.regards steve.

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Hi, I don't know much about the finer details of dream analysis, but could not help but be impressed by your dream. I immediately thought of the slaying of the dragon by ----(cant remember the name of the hero) and then he tasted the blood of the slain dragon, at which time he heard the song of the universe, i.e., transformation, virgin birth, you have been reborn to a higher realm. What realm?
You mention in real life you love bears, and you as well mention you had a destructive nature. It sounds to me that the 15' bear and your affection for bears express a particular duality of your nature, you somehow loved the power of your destructive nature, you had not made the transition to eliminate it, (the ego loves the ego, however destructive it might be -- it's goal is its preservation) but now, you are ready to face its destructiveness or else, you realize it will kill you. You made the choice of life in its best aspect. You chose to live by shooting it, and, futhermore, with just one bullet at hand, you chose the very strategic point -- irreversible --- not a doubt in your mind, a hero's problem solving! I think tat the gun that was handed to you means that you have the tools at hand, too! Congratulations. Victoria

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victoria,many thanks for your input,the destructive part of my dream you noticed ,is an inner part of me,i am not physically destructive at all,in fact i am quite passive,i dont think i have reached a higher realm just yet,but feel i am about to meet the thing thats stopping me from some sort of transition,i read an old saying yesterday,to slay a dragon you must become the dragon, i need this bear,i need its medicine,and by assimilating its power,its knowledge, as discribed in my dream i can get through this.as jerry said,this is a primal sort of ritual,i have just read the ritual that jerry was talking about,and i am stunned ,i had no idea i new this myth,yet more proof for the collective unconscious.
i am reading on bears again from a spiritual/native peoples point of view.
funnily enough,my friends and family say i remind them of a bear .and yes you are right,i need to acknowledge this part of myself,but in a spiritual sense.that is why the bear in my dream was so aggressive ,the two aspects of the buddha come to mind,if the deity wants to open you,and you are open enough you experience it as bliss,but if you are clinging to your ego and its little world ,the same deity is experienced as something terrible ,i am obviously not open enough,but its got my attention now,in the heros journey myth,the hero is helped on his journey by all sorts of archetypal powers,he is even given a weapon to help slay the monster,but the final task can only be done by the hero him/her self ,and in most myths the hero ,i like to think ,doesnt kill anything at all but acknowledges it ,and assimilates it .i am reminded also of an old zen saying,that if you want to be one with your self,then you must become one, with all that is without yourself .i can talk the talk,but i am still learning to walk.regards steve

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